The new capability is called IOS Software Activation and relates to the IOS operating system that runs on both the San Jose, California-based networking vendor’s core product lines.
All the additional options will ship on the box, but ones the customer hasn’t bought will be turned off so that whenever they want them, they can simply pay up and turn them on via a software key.
The software key model is already common in other areas of IT such as application software, as well as in information security, where vendors are shipping bundles of functionality on appliances and customers can pick and mix which ones they want to be activated. Cisco itself has the pre-loaded, software-activated approach on many of its products that don’t run IOS, such as its CallManager IP PBX.
Software activation is also widespread among networking vendors, or at least among those who have developed core operating systems more recently than Cisco, which is a victim of its own success in this context. Not only is its OS longer in the tooth than some of its competitors’, but it is also already in use in a huge user base. Simon Pollard, product marketing manager for IOS technologies at Cisco Europe, said the company must phase in Software Activation rather than foist it upon devices already deployed.
The current model for adding functionality will prevail for products already out in the field, with Software Activation being the default on all new IOS-based products. So it will be a number of years before it becomes the norm in Cisco switch and router estates around the world. I would expect it to permeate the whole portfolio over time, though of course we may decide there are products on which it is not applicable, said Pollard.
Software Activation is not the same as the modularity that Cisco now offers on the IOS XR version of the OS for the carrier market, available on its CRS-1 service provider core box and the 12000, another large device for the telco space.
XR is for very high-end environments where you have a highly distributed system and virtually no limitations on the processing power available, Pollard said. We gave it a high degree of modularity so that individual modules can be removed or taken offline for patching without impacting the overall running.
In other words, XR’s modularity is an aspect of its core functionality, whereas Software Activation is about additional features that can be added to the enterprise version of IOS without impacting its running. Apart from making a network admin’s life easier when it comes to adding in new features, its benefits to Cisco are that it can argue that the functionality is already there and so the customer might as well buy it, and it removes the competition’s boasting rights about the need to reboot IOS when their products obviate that requirement.
